40 Years Ago: Gary Carter’s Opening Day at Shea

This week, forty years ago, Gary Carter made his mark with an Opening Day home run in his New York Mets debut at Shea Stadium. It was his first game with the Mets after spending eleven years as a perennial All-Star catcher with the Montreal Expos.

In my 57 years on this earth (soon 58), I’ve been lucky enough to attend several Opening Days in person, whether it’s been the team’s actual opener or their first home opener. It’s always better when it’s the team’s first game of the season, but the first home game is the next best thing. Today, I’m looking forward to seeing the Citi Field debut by the New York Mets’ new $750 million man, right fielder Juan Soto. In 1985, the spotlight was on Carter in his first game for the Mets at Shea.

Before his years with the Mets, Carter was part of a core of three future Hall of Famers who made their mark with the Expos, along with Andre Dawson and Tim Raines. Carter made his Major League Debut with the Expos in 1974. In his official rookie year (1975), he finished second in the National League Rookie of the Year voting (to John Montefusco).

Carter became a star in 1980 when he finished 2nd in the Most Valuable Player voting behind Mike Schmidt. The 1981 season was marred by a long in-season player strike, but Carter brought baseball back with a bang (two of them, actually) at the All-Star Game in Cleveland in August; he hit two home runs and was the game’s MVP.

The ’81 season featured expanded playoffs, and it was the first and only time the Expos would participate in the postseason while in Montreal. Carter, in the N.L. Division Series and NLCS hit .429 in ten games, with a pair of home runs and six RBI, but the Expos fell to the Los Angeles Dodgers in the 5th game of the NLCS.

Carter spent three more years in Montreal before a blockbuster trade to the Mets.

Cooperstown Cred: Gary Carter (C)

• Elected to the Hall of Fame in 2003 on the 6th ballot (78% of the vote)
• Expos (1974-84), Mets (1985-89), Giants (1990), Dodgers (1991), Expos (1992)
• Career: .262 BA, .335 OBP, .439 SLG, 2,092 Hits, 324 HR, 1,225 RBI
• Career: 115 OPS+, 70.1 WAR (Wins Above Replacement)
• 11-time All-Star, two-time All-Star MVP
• 3-time Gold Glove Award winner, 5-time Silver Slugger Award winner
• Finished in the top 6 of the N.L. MVP vote four times
• Member of 1986 World Series Champion New York Mets

(cover photo: Associated Press/Ray Stubblewine)

1985: Opening Day at Shea

Forty years ago, I was 17 years old, a senior in high school, with Dr. Kent’s English class scheduled for the afternoon of Tuesday, April 9th. Yours truly, along with seven or eight classmates, decided that Dr. Kent would take a back seat to Doctor K, the Mets’ ace pitcher Dwight Gooden, slated to toe the rubber on Opening Day against the St. Louis Cardinals.

Gooden was the NL rookie of the year in 1984 and, at the age of 20 in 1985, only a couple of years older than our group of class-cutting high school seniors.

The group of us attended Horace Mann High School in the Riverdale section of the Bronx; as seniors, a couple of us had cars, so we piled in a couple of them and drove straight from our morning classes to the ballpark in Queens.  It was a brutally cold, blustery day, not preferred baseball weather by any standard. But despite the cold, the ballpark was nearly full (the announced attendance was 46,781).

There was great anticipation for the ’85 edition of the Mets. In 1984, after seven truly miserable seasons, the Amazins posted a 90-win season, finishing 6 1/2 games behind the division-winning Chicago Cubs.  The ’84 Mets showed the potential of bigger things to come: 22-year-old Darryl Strawberry (the ’83 Rookie of the Year) was emerging as one of the big power bats in the National League, and former MVP Keith Hernandez (acquired in an ’83 trade with St. Louis) gave the young Mets the kind of veteran leadership often so crucial to the development of a winning ball club.

However, the key reason that the ’85 version of the Mets held such promise for the long-suffering fan base was the off-season acquisition of catcher Gary Carter.  The always-smiling Carter (whose enthusiasm for the game and positive demeanor earned the nickname the “Kid”) was already a seven-time All-Star and had been the face of the Expos franchise.  The Mets traded four players (Hubie Brooks, Floyd Youmans, Herm Winningham, and Mike Fitzgerald, with no big losses among them) to get the Kid from the Expos.

Carter was considered the “last piece” to get New York from a 2nd-place 90-win team to a division winner.  Besides adding a power bat to complement Strawberry and aging slugger George Foster, Carter was the perfect veteran backstop to guide the Mets’ young starting staff.  Besides the 20-year-old Gooden, the ’85 Mets featured three other talented young hurlers under the age of 25: Ron Darling (24), Rick Aguilera (23), and Sid Fernandez (22). With Carter behind the dish, all three flourished, with season ERAs of 2.90, 3.24, and 2.80, respectively.

And, of course, Gooden turned in one of the greatest pitching season-long performances in the history of the game, going 24-4 with a 1.53 ERA. Ultimately, all of this wasn’t quite good enough for the Mets to make the post-season; they won 98 games in ’85, but that was three fewer than NL East Champion St. Louis.

Anyway, on that frigid day in April, the magic of the ’85 season was still a wish, a pent-up desire for the fans who had endured so many awful teams. Mets broadcasters Steve Zabriskie and Tim McCarver characterized the atmosphere at Shea as a “World Series atmosphere.”

Gooden and the Mets were facing the team that would ultimately be their nemesis in September, the Cardinals.  The Redbirds’ starter, Joaquin Andujar, was a 20-game winner the previous season and had finished fourth in the NL Cy Young voting.

The Mets gave their cold fans something to warm their hearts with two first-inning runs on an infield single by Hernandez and a bases-loaded walk to third baseman Howard Johnson. In that inning, in his first pitch seen as a Met, he was drilled on the elbow on an inside fastball by Andujar. Carter was in pain, mostly from the sting on a cold day, but stayed in the game.

Slugging first baseman Jack Clark, making his Cardinals debut after spending ten seasons in San Francisco, led off the top of the second with a solo blast off Gooden on an 0-2 fastball right down the middle. In the next inning, the Redbirds tied it up on a passed ball by Carter on a low pitch from Gooden.

The Mets scored against Andujar in each of the following three innings on a solo home run by Foster, an RBI single by Hernandez, and an RBI double by shortstop Rafael Santana.

So, Gooden had a 5-2 lead when he took the hill in the 7th inning.  But after two singles by Andy Van Slyke and Ozzie Smith, manager Davey Johnson went to his bullpen and Doug Sisk.  The right-handed Sisk wound up having an awful ’85 campaign, but he had been an effective relief pitcher for the ’83 and ’84 Mets, sporting a 2.18 ERA for those two seasons. However, his success was largely a mirage; he walked five batters per nine innings and was constantly pitching out of jams, something that’s not sustainable in the long term.

Sisk allowed the two runners he inherited from Gooden to score but still had a 5-4 lead going into the top of the 9th inning.  With frostbite settling in, the throng of fans still in attendance were eager to close out the Opening Day win. Alas, Sisk loaded the bases for Clark. Sisk pitched to the Redbirds’ first baseman carefully and wound up walking him to allow the tying run to score.

So, with the wind swirling on that miserable day, the game would go to the bottom of the 9th. Former Met Neil Allen came out of the bullpen for Whitey Herzog’s Redbirds. Allen was one of the two pitchers (along with Rick Ownbey) that the Mets traded to St. Louis in 1983 in exchange for Hernandez. At the time, Mets catcher John Stearns referred to the deal for the former MVP as the “biggest heist since the Thomas Crown Affair.”

Anyway, thanks in part to an error by 2nd baseman Tommie Herr, Allen loaded the bases. However, he got Mookie Wilson to fly out to center field to extend the misery of the anxious but freezing fans.

Jesse Orosco stranded a runner on 2nd in the top of the 10th inning and so the Mets had the heart of the order coming up in the bottom of the 10th.  By now, the game had lasted over 3 1/2 hours; all but one of my classmates had left. Just two of us remained, shivering in the bitter cold.

Hernandez led off the inning by striking out, which brought Carter to the plate. And then, in a Hollywood finish, the Kid delivered a game-winning home run over the left field wall, and the Mets had their Opening Day victory.  As Carter crossed the plate, flashing that megawatt smile, all was good at Shea Stadium, and the tone had been set for a magical season in Flushing.

The season didn’t end with a playoff appearance, but it was a campaign that turned the back pages of the Big Apple tabloids from Yankees territory to Mets territory.  After drawing just over 1.1 million fans in 1983, the ’85 edition of the Metropolitans drew over 2.7 million fans.

This particular fan, inspired in part by that Opening Day win, attended nearly 40 of the Mets’ 81 home dates in 1985 and over 50 in the championship season of 1986.  In many ways, thanks to this one game and also a burgeoning friendship with people I had barely known until the spring of my senior year (great Mets fan friends Adam and Stephen), my passion for the game of baseball spiked, and I wound up working at ESPN two days after graduating college in 1989.

The 1986 Postseason

Gary Carter finished the 1985 season with 32 home runs and 100 RBI and finished 6th in the league MVP voting.  The following year, driving in 105 runs, he was an integral part of the 108-win championship Mets’ squad and was 3rd in the MVP vote, behind only Mike Schmidt and Glenn Davis.

In the NLCS, the Mets faced the Houston Astros. With the series tied at two games apiece, Game 5 at Shea featured an epic pitching matchup between Gooden and future Hall of Famer Nolan Ryan. The two aces gave up just one run each, sending the game to extra innings. In the bottom of the 12th, Carter delivered a game-winning RBI single to give the Mets a 2-1 victory. Famously, the Mets outlasted the Astros in 16 innings in Game 6 at the Astrodome.

In the World Series, against the Boston Red Sox, the exhausted Mets lost the first two games at Shea. Game 3 at Fenway Park was a must-win for the Mets. Lenny Dykstra led off the game with a solo home run, with Carter stroking a two-run double three batters later to give the Mets a lead they would never relinquish.

Carter was the hitting star in Game 4, swatting a pair of home runs over the Green Monster with three RBI. After losing Game 5, the Mets had to have Game 6 at Shea. The Mets were down 3-2 in the eighth innings, but Carter tied it up with a bases-loaded sacrifice fly.

The Red Sox took a 5-3 lead in the top of the 10th. In the bottom of the frame, Wally Backman and Keith Hernandez both flew out. Carter came up with the season on the line. I was at that game with one of my friends from high school (who was with us on Opening Day the year before). I remember saying, “So many fans from other teams hate Gary Carter. No way he makes them all happy by being the final out.”

As it turned out, I was correct. Carter singled to left, sparking a rally that eventually ended with Mookie Wilson’s grounder going through Bill Buckner’s legs. Two days later, the Mets had the franchise’s second World Series title.

Gary Carter’s Final Years

In 1987, his age 33 season, Gary Carter started to show the typical signs of age so often seen with catchers. He hit just .235 with a .290 OBP.

In 1988, he hit .242 with just 11 HR and 46 RBI in 130 games. The Mets returned to the postseason, facing the Los Angeles Dodgers in the NLCS. He had a final clutch postseason moment in Game 1 when he hit a two-run double in Game 1, leading the Mets to a 3-2 victory. Alas, he hit just .174 in the final six games of the series, and the Mets fell in seven games to the eventual World Champions.

Carter played in only 50 games in 1989, missing three months due to arthroscopic knee surgery. He hit just .183 with a pair of home runs and a lonely 15 RBI. The Mets released him after the season.

Carter was a part-time player for the final three years of his 19-year career, spending 1990 with the San Francisco Giants, 1991 with the Dodgers, before finishing his career back “home” with the Expos in 1992. The Kid finished his career with 324 home runs and 11 All-Star appearances.

I had the privilege of meeting him in September 1998 when he did an interview on the Up Close show, for which I was the Coordinating Producer. Carter always had a “nice guy” reputation, and I can attest that it was richly deserved. Carter was enshrined into the Hall of Fame in 2003. Sadly, less than 10 years later, he was afflicted with brain cancer and passed away at the age of 57 in 2012.

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